


Lantern Lighting with Cats

by junko



Series: Strawberrry Fields Forever [6]
Category: Bleach, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-19
Updated: 2012-09-19
Packaged: 2017-11-14 13:55:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/515926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junko/pseuds/junko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ichigo decides to celebrate Obon at Hogwarts with mixed results.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lantern Lighting with Cats

**Author's Note:**

> I was reminded that I've neglected this series, so I've written a fun couple of scenes. The plot is not advanced much, but it seems Ichigo will finally get his nattou for breakfest. :-)
> 
> Also a note on Obon/Bon: In Japan, this holiday is celebrated a lot differently than it is in the U.S. (where I've encountered it). Several days are spent honoring the dead, with visits to graves, and, if Wikipedia can be belived, a carnival (?). At any rate, I'm not sure it's even celebrated in the U.K., but I decided that Ichigo's temple is following the American tradition of holding it in mid-Septemeber and making it a cultural celebration, followed by lantern lighting.
> 
> The JMSDF that Ichigo refers to is the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, which replaced the Japanese Navy after WWII.
> 
> What Yoruichi is exactly is even a question for Bleach fans, but I assume she is a yokai--though gender switching cat/human with a fondness for nudity seems odd even for a yokai. Also, boys freaking out that Yoruichi could talk in cat form was a running gag in early Bleach episodes.

Ichigo sat under a big oak tree next to the lake at Hogwart’s trying to make the folds of the stiff English paper make a proper origami boat. The air coming off the black water was chilly, but the afternoon sun on the whitecaps was bright. He was supposed to be in class, but no one here seemed to realize that it was Obon. 

Okay, so it wasn’t really. 

For one, he usually thought of the festival as just ‘Bon’ and celebrated in July, but he’d gotten a postcard from the temple he’d been visiting in London inviting him and his family to the British version, which apparently was today. Since his stupid roommates still hadn’t agreed to an altar to the dead, which they claimed sounded “creepy” as well as against campus fire code, it occurred to Ichigo that one way he could get his letters to Rukia was by sending them on the water, on lantern lighting day--today. So, he continued to try to wrestle the letter into a decent boat--well, boats, actually.

He’d made one for his mom, of course, but since his letter to Rukia had gotten so long, Ichigo decided to also honor everyone he remembered from the Soul Society. He had a boat for Renji, Byakuya, and even that crazy-ass Kenpachi. Of course, the one he was struggling with was the one for Rukia.

A rustle in the reeds signaled the approach of Lady Yoruichi. He saw her black tail swaying among the tall grasses before the rest of her emerged. She had a little bundle held daintily in her sharp, feline teeth, which she dropped beside Ichigo. She sat down on her haunches and, curling her tail around her paws, said, “Mischief managed.”

“Huh?”

“I pilfered some candles for you from that horrible Snape-Sensei. I suspect your arch-nemeses will be blamed, however. I saw the Weasley twins cutting class as well.”

For a second Ichigo thought she meant that they were planning to honor the dead today, too, but then he shook his head. No, not those two--they were probably just goofing off because they could. 

“I think you should consider mending fences, Ichigo,” she continued with a blink of her yellow eyes. “They seem to have a map of the castle. It might tell you how to get into the kitchens.”

He looked up from his origami at that. English food was making him sick. He’d been reduced to eating the package of food Orihime had sent, which involved a homemade-something, he wasn’t even sure what. But it had smelled like home in a way nothing here had. He’d gobbled it like a greedy, hungry ghost. 

“Also,” she said. With a little huffing noise, she settled into a position Ichigo thought of as ‘cat-seiza’ where she tucked all her limbs under herself neatly. “You have to start showing up for detention at Albus-kun’s office or he’s going to get cranky. He’s already started nagging me about you.”

Ichigo finally got the last fold right and set aside Rukia’s crumpled looking boat. “What’s he going to do? Expel me? I wish he would. Leaving here would be a relief.”

She sighed, watching a dragonfly intently as it flitted through the cattail heads. Her tail twitched where she’d curled it under her chin. “You could try to make the best of it. You might surprise yourself by learning something from these English wizards.”

“Like how to fly a broom or play a sport I’ve never heard of?” Ichigo snorted. If he admitted it to himself, he was a little jealous of how easily Karin fit into life at Hogwarts. Apparently, she’d gotten onto the Gryffindor Quidditch team as some kind of alternate, which was why he was lighting the lanterns now instead of at sundown. He had to go show his support for her at her first game later tonight. When he realized Yoruichi was still looking at him, Ichigo shrugged. “Sorry, but I don’t see how any of that is going to help me fight Hollows any better.”

Yoruichi's only comment was to spring after the dragonfly. Ichigo thought her initial bat was going to miss, but she cheated and used a bit of flash-step to catch it deftly in her mouth. As always, watching her noisily crunch the insect’s wings in her teeth, Ichigo really wanted to ask if she thought of herself more as a cat or a person.

He figured she’d probably just say something mystical and obtuse like, ‘yes,’ and just leave it at that.

Ichigo returned his attention to filling each boat with a candle. He should probably say some kind of prayer or something before lighting them and setting them in the water, shouldn’t he? “Aw, crap!” Ichigo said suddenly, patting at the pockets of his school uniform. “I don’t have any matches!”

Yoruichi turned, half an iridescent wing sticking out from her lips. “Maybe you should try using that wand of yours.”

“Oh.” He pulled the wand out from where it was tucked, forgotten, in his robe pocket. He held it up and looked at it, Zangetsu’s little sister. The bamboo was superlight and brittle. Ichigo was sure he was going to break it accidentally one of these days, but he could feel the ghost hair core thrumming with reistsu—his reistsu. That part was weird. It really did feel like a piece of the old man, which was probably why the only spell Ichigo could do with any real certainty wasn’t ‘magic’ at all, but Getsuga Tenshō. He shook his head, and started to put it away, “Jeez, Yoruichi. I just want a tiny flame not a destructo-bomb of doom.”

“Try it,” she insisted in that deep, masculine commanding tone that always made Ichigo want to shout, ‘Yes, sir!’ and salute.

He sighed. He didn’t really have much choice. She clearly wouldn’t offer to go fetch some for him until he gave it a try, and, though Ichigo considered attempting to sneak back into the dorm, he’d risk being caught for truancy. He cared less about that then the fact that, if he got busted, this stupid letter would never get sent.

Fire was one of those early spells he was supposed to have mastered as a first year. Never mind that he’d never been a first year, the crazy Hogwart’s administration insisted he be placed in a grade according to age rather than ability. 

Okay, he could do this. He’d faced an enraged Kenpachi Zaraki; a stupid fire spell wasn’t going to defeat him. Ichigo was pretty sure he knew the phrase. The trick was pronouncing it right, made much more difficult thanks to the fact that he still struggled with some of the goofy English consonants. “Leviosa,” was going to be the death of him. But this one, at least, had fewer problem sounds. 

His first attempt got a sputtering spark. Youruchi watched him patiently, while cleaning her paws. Finally, she suggested, “Have you tried Japanese?”

“No,” Ichigo said startled. He blinked back and forth between her and the wand. “You mean that would work?”

“I don’t see why not.” She yawned lazily and arched her back. “My understanding is that it’s like kidō. Once you’re good at it, you don’t need to repeat the chants. Therefore, it stands to reason that the important bit is the visualization. You think in Japanese. You might as well try speaking it, too.”

“If this works I’m going to murder that little charms sensei.”

She chuckled. Crossing her paws primly, she settled down on them. “One thing at a time, Ichigo. Try the spell.”

Ichigo closed his eyes, and reminded himself that visualization was just a fancy word for pretend. He just had to channel his inner Orihime and somehow imagine bringing out fire from his reistsu rather than Getsuga Tenshō. His eyes snapped open when he heard the roar of a column of flame and felt a blast of heat on his face. Ms. Yoruichi let out a yelping-meow of surprise, as she jumped three feet into the air.

“Tone it down!” she shouted, her claws extended and back arched in irritation.

Of course that was _always_ Ichigo’s problem. Everything was either all or nothing. So, he went with nothing and the flame doused instantly. Luckily, Ichigo had had the wand pointed out over the lake, so nothing, not even the paper boats, had caught fire. He’d made a fairly awesome flare, though. Probably the entire school had seen it… and the British Coast Guard, heck, as high into the air as it had shot, maybe the JMSDF had spotted it, too.

Ichigo peered at the tip of the wand, where it still seemed to be smoldering. “Heh. That was kind of cool.”

“Gods, you’re a menace,” Yoruichi sniffed, cleaning her shoulder like she’d meant to jump in fear.

Using the still hot ember on the tip of the wand, Ichigo managed to light the wick of one of the larger candle stubs Yoruichi had ‘pilfered.’ He set to work setting lit candles in each boat and setting them afloat. Of course, unlike with a river, the lake had no natural current to take them away, so he had to lean out on one of the oak’s massive roots, and give them a shove. The one he considered Renji’s seemed on a collision course with Byakuya’s, trying to ram them both into the shore. Rukia’s sailed clean and free, but he was pretty sure the lake monster ate Kenpachi’s. He left his mom’s for last. She, after all, wasn’t in the Soul Society. “One day,” he told her, as he set the boat free, “I’m going to catch up to that Grand Fisher Hollow again and free your soul. I swear.”

With the last boat away, Ichigo scrambled his way back over the tree root to the shore. Leaning his back against the oak tree, he held onto the candle stub he’d used to light the others and tried not to feel miserable and alone.

Yoruichi padded over softly and laid her triangular head on Ichigo’s knee. 

They sat there in silence until the wind off the lake blew out his candle. 

#

By dinner, Ichigo was starting to be crushed by guilt. He’d lost count of the number of his fellow Hufflepuffs who’d come up to him and whispered, “We covered for you in class today. The professors all think you were sick.”

Cedric Diggory had even collected all his homework. He presented the pile with a smile, like he expected to be thanked for the ‘favor.’ “Uh, yeah, arigatou gozaimasu, Diggory-san.”

“Doo itashimashite, Kurosaki-san,” Cedric said with a little nod, not hearing the sarcasm in Ichigo’s tone. Cedric’s pronunciation wasn’t half-bad, though, he just tended to speak too slowly, sounding a bit childish. Still, it was a nice effort. A surprising number of Hufflepuffs were learning little phrases in Japanese, which they seemed to delight in trying out on Ichigo, despite his often embarrassed replies.

Cedric settled next to him at the long table. “You missed all the fun in potions,” he said. And, like the rest of the Hufflepuffs, he didn’t seem to expect Ichigo to explain where he’d been all day. “Snape was in a right foul mood for some reason, and he took advantage of your absence to try to bully us.”

“You rebuffed him though, right?” Ichigo said, feeling kind of bad knowing that he hadn’t been there to help protect the class.

“Well, me and the Ravenclaws,” Cedric said modestly. He glanced over his shoulder at where Cho Chang sat, and they exchanged a moony look. Ichigo tried not to roll his eyes. Their mutual crush was so obvious.

“Dude. She’s younger than you,” Ichigo admonished. 

“So?” Cedric smiled, “She’s still cute.”

Ichigo had no reply to that, so he just stared in horror at the food that appeared in front of him. Everything appeared to be brown and kind of mushy. He glanced down the table, hoping to spot fish of any kind, even that horribly over-breaded stuff. “Cheese and pickle sandwich?” the Hufflepuff across from Ichigo offered. Ichigo’s stomach flipped at the sight of it.

“Uh, no,” he said, still looking around for anything edible. He finally spotted carrots, only when he took some they appeared to have been boiled within an inch of their lives. He ate them anyway. “I’m going to die.”

Just then he heard the unmistakable sound of the Weasley twins’ boisterous laughter. Ichigo pulled away from the table. 

“Where you going now?” Cedric said, automatically standing up to follow him. Ichigo almost told Cedric to stay and eat, but then the idea of having back-up against the twins kind of appealed to him.

“I need to borrow something those Weasleys have,” Ichigo explained.

“Oh crap,” Cedric said, but followed along dutifully. “Just try to stay out of a fight, would you?’

“No promises,” Ichigo said.

In a moment they were standing behind the twins who were just finishing up some joke or other that had the whole Gryffindor table in stitches. The younger brother—Ron, was it?—spotted Ichigo first. “Oi,” he said, “Trouble.”

Fred and George turned to look at Ichigo and Cedric. “What do you want, Strawberry?”

For a couple of delinquents who never seemed to study, it irritated Ichigo no end that the one time the Twins seemed to have gone into the library, it was to look up how his name translated into English. “I need to borrow your map,” he said.

The boys gave each other a meaningful look, and then said in unison, “We don’t have any map.”

“Yes, you do,” Ichigo insisted. “Listen, I need to get into the kitchen. I haven’t eaten anything decent in three weeks. I’m willing to offer something in trade if you let me borrow it just once. Anything. I’m desperate here.”

Fred and George looked at each other again for a long moment. They seemed to be passing some kind of telepathic communication between them with eyebrow quirks and glances. Finally one of them—was it Fred or George?—said, “Fine. Meet us by the bowl of fruit portrait.”

Ichigo had wandered everywhere in search of an entrance to the kitchen, so he knew exactly which one they meant. “In the basement, right?” When they nodded, Ichigo asked, “When?”

“Right after dinner,” the other brother said.

“Oh,” said the other. “And bring your cat.”

#

The Weasley twins were fools if they thought they were going to pull any kind of stunt with Ms.Yoruichi, so Ichigo had no problem asking her to come along. The twins met him in front of the largest, ugliest still life painting of a bowl of fruit Ichigo had ever seen. “We can’t give you the map,” Fred said. “Not even for a second.”

Just when Ichigo was going to cry foul, George added, “But we can get you into the kitchen.”

“Tickle the pear,” Fred explained.

“I’ll kill you if this is some trick to make me do something dorky,” Ichigo said, reaching a hand up to the pear.

George laughed. “You don’t need our help to be stupid, Berry-boy.”

But, sure enough Ichigo’s tickle was followed by the grinding sound of gears and a door swung open. He could hear the sounds of a busy kitchen down a little ways away. “Okay,” he said, stepping through. “Now what do you two want in exchange.”

“Your cat isn’t a cat, is he?” George asked.

“He’s some kind of shape-shifter like Professor McGonagall, right?”

“Right,” Ichigo said. “So?”

“So, we need help breaking into Snape’s potions apothecary. If he can slip through the window and then open the door for us, we’ll consider it even.”

Ichigo looked at Yoruichi. “Well, you want to?”

She licked a paw, as though considering, “Oh, sure. Why not?”

The twins both reacted a lot like Ishida and Chad had when they first heard Yoruichi speak. When they stopped having conniption fits, they pointed to Yoruichi and said, “It talks!”

“And opens doors,” Ichigo said, waving a hand good-bye as he headed into the kitchen. “Knock yourselves out, boys. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

#

The house-elves were the smallest oni Ichigo had ever seen, and they seemed a lot more friendly and willing to help than your average Japanese ogre. The idea of fermented soybeans for breakfast seemed baffling to them, but when Ichigo begged them pretty-please, they agreed to hunt down recipes as well as ingredients for all the other food he requested. They told him, too, if he ever thought of something else he wanted for a meal, he could write it down and leave it with his laundry. They’d do their best to accommodate him.

When he met up with the Weasley twins at the Quidditch match they looked both ridiculously happy and deeply embarrassed. George looked like he had a bit of a bruise forming under one eye, but he seemed pleased with himself none-the-less.

“Did everything go okay?” Ichigo asked.

Fred gave Ichigo a long, meaningful look before breaking into a huge smile. “Your cat’s a girl.”

George nodded solemnly, touching the bluish spot under his eyes with a goofy, sloppy grin, “A naked girl.”


End file.
